Future of Wilderness

The last destination of our journey through Wilderness is the future. Wilderness has constantly decreased over time. Just within the last century, humans have cultivated half of the planet. Only 13% of the oceans are still pristine. We have to stop this development now or our children will have no chance to ever experience what nature without human impact would look like. And the future will bring even bigger challenges. The climate crisis is accelerating. Within decades, ecosystems might not be able to adapt to rapid changes. And both human population and land use are still increasing. While these issues threaten Wilderness, it might also be part of the answer to them. Wild, intact ecosystems are much more resilient than the ones stressed by human pressure. And they provide existential services like clean water and oxygen. Wilderness even benefits mental health in a world of stress.

The presentations below show how we can educate and involve the Wilderness Advocates of tomorrow to create a brighter future.

Green School in Cameroon – Martin Hahn

Martin Hahn, Honorary President of Happy Kids Akademie, Cameroon is about the Green School in Cameroon. He explained how it was established, what are its goals and what are plans for future.

Conservation Careers Advice – Nick Askew

Nick is the Founder and Director of Conservation Careers and holds a PhD in the behavioural ecology of Barn Owls. As a professional conservationist over the past 20 years he has worked across the Academic, Private, Public, Charity and Enterprise sectors. During his career, he has raised over £2,500,000 for conservation projects across 120 countries to help threatened species and habitats. Recently, he has helped thousands of people into their dream conservation job. Since establishing Conservation Careers he has spoken to over 500 professional conservationists and curated their advice, and his experience, into an online course. The Mission of Conservation Careers is to help conservationists achieve career success. We believe that all wildlife is beautiful and that it deserves great conservationists working to protect it. We have extensive international knowledge, experience and a network of contacts within the conservation career sector. This means that we can help job seekers and conservation organisations to form lasting relationships.

Project: Game On! Climate Game – Dr Gabriella Mária Nagy and Thor Morante

The project ‘Game on! Don’t let climate change end the game’  is an initiative of a consortium of 10 partners from 8 Central and Eastern European countries to activate the global youth and react to the existential threat climate change represents for the future of humankind. The project has been made possible thanks to the co-financing of the Development Education and Awareness Raising (DEAR) mechanism. Mr Thor Morante is a project manager and communications expert with over 12 years of professional experience working in the environmental field in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. He has worked as an environmental journalist and editor, as a communications specialist and consultant for a diversity of non-profit, public and private institutions, and as a project manager and international cooperation expert.

Wilderness, Art & Education – Britta Wahlers

Britta Wahlers is an art teacher and artist with a proven history of work in creative education and the arts, qualified in e-learning, educational development, media art, art projects and collaboration, among others, and concepts. Art and education specialist with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and a Master in Media Art with a focus on education and visual arts. Her lecture in the first part is about wilderness in general, posing some thoughts and questions to think about, which she underlies with some photo-graphics and artistic work. The second part is then a transition into art and how artists work on this topic and also herself. The third part is about some examples, how you can combine art and nature in education.

Wildlife Forensics Academy – Andro Vos

Andro Vos is the CEO and Founder Wildlife Forensic Academy, Cape Town. He is also a forensic innovation manager to The Netherlands Forensic Institute. In collaboration with the United Nations and the Eurpoean Commission, Andro Vos has developed a plan to establish a forensic wildlife academy in Africa. But the project stopped. He took the initiative to build the Academy as a private enterprise. It will be the first of its kind in the world using forensic knowledge in the combat against wildlife crime. The Wildlife Forensic Academy is world’s first wildlife forensic training Academy.The Academy is a platform for the mobilisation of wildlife forensic knowledge and expertise. The Academy provides study aboard courses and internships for international students.

WILDArt – connecting Wilderness with art – European Widlerness Society

Max A E Rossberg, Chairman at European Wilderness Society. Max is presenting one of the activities of European Wilderness Society – Wild Art. It is a week long “summer camp” in Wilderness, for artists frsom all over Europe. In a week, artists experienced the beauty and peacefulness of nature and created various art pieces to express their impressions.

From Wilderness to wildness to kinship – Authors of the book “Wildness”, USA

Gavin Van Horn, John Hausdoerffer, Laura Alice Watt discuss past, present and future definitions of Wildness, Wilderness and beyond. In this interactive discussion, Watt, Van Horn, and Hausdoerffer will share inspiration for and lessons from their 2017 book Wildness: Relations of People and Place. They will discuss the fine line between land-based wilderness and process-based wildness, including the extent to which a new idea of wildness can help stretch the original spirit of wilderness from distant habitats dedicated to biodiversity to all of the places in which we live, work, and play. 

How traditional games can create bioregional identities – Gudrun Bruckner

Gudrun Bruckner is Operations Director Green Steps, which is an international start up at the intersection of ecology, education and IT. Green Steps claims that a deep and playful connection with nature reduces consumption and strengthens respect for Mother Earth. They are experts in outdoor education, and use information technology as a tool for social and environmental good. In this presentation Gudrun presents their game Flying Friends – a bilingual memory game that deepens and accelerates the understanding of nature.

Youth Wilderness Camps – Generation Earth and WWF Youth Austria

“Call of the wild” is a high level training program, based on one fundamental idea: You protect what you love.
Thus, the program is a blend of nature connection methods, inspired and developed by native Americans and a toolbox for campaigning towards wilderness conservation. Within a year, 16 young adults run through four live seminars, a number of remote tasks and are asked to implement a project to train their skills and make a change. The basic principle is Generation Earths proven youth empowerment approach: Content, structure and the activities are dynamically designed to fit this particular groups needs as good as possible. During the session the organizers will talk in more detail about who they are, at which stage the project is and what its outcomes are right now and what the challenges are.

What really drives pro-environmental behaviour? – Simon King and Duncan Pritchard

Dr Simon King was trained by the Wilderness Leadership School as a Guide prior to entering Medical School. He worked in general medicine in the UK and in remote areas in North America for over a decade, developing a professional interest in psychiatry, neuro-imaging, behavioural medicine and the young field of applied cognitive psychology.  Some 15 years ago he returned to South Africa, founded a medical support company for the Ecotourism sector and has been working exclusively with the major safari businesses in most of the Protected Areas on the African continent ever since.  He has co-founded the Park Doctor Association, consults to the Game Rangers Association and sits on the Health and Wellbeing Specialist Advisory Group to the World Commission on Protected Areas of the IUCN. Efforts to preserve wild, undeveloped spaces in an era in which human behaviour is the dominant force removing them, requires new thinking around how to best influence the uptake of pro-environmental behaviour by human beings.  This presentation covers a new emerging strategy that appears more effective than traditional behaviour shaping interventions.  It looks at what we know today about the identity structure, how it influences behaviour and how we can design outdoor activities to impact this and thereby influence behaviour.

Rewilding John Davis

John Davis from Rewilding Earth, USA is presenting organization’s goals and what is done to achieve rewilding all around the world.